Here are two forthcoming books by author Brian Hannan that are sure to interest Cinema Retro readers:

THE MAKING OF THE GUNS OF NAVARONE by Brian Hannan
(published by Baroliant Press May 2013
£8.99)

History tells us The Guns Of Navarone was a huge critical
and box office success. But for most of the filming and the run-up to release it
didn’t look that way. US producer Carl Foreman, a victim of the McCarty
anti-communist witch-hunt of the early 1950s, lost his scriptwriter
(Eric Ambler), preferred cast (William Holden and Cary Grant), director
(Alexander Mackendrick), two leading ladies and very nearly one the stars, David
Niven who almost died during shooting. Actor Gregory Peck turned into a
potential liability after the disastrous box office of Beloved Infidel. Calling
on new research material, Brian Hannan takes a fresh look at an old favourite,
creating a snapshot, movie-wise, of the period.

THE MAKING OF LAWRENCE OF ARABIA by Brian Hannan
(published by Baroliant Press May 2013 £8.99)

Nearly forty years in the making, with around twenty
different attempts to get the film
off the ground, Lawrence Of Arabia finally emerged in the triumphant David Lean
version. If the movie shoot was a nightmare, with spiralling costs and the
production eventually postponed, what followed was even worse with disastrous
advance bookings, a newspaper strike that paralysed advertising and the worst
snowstorms in a century that stopped people getting out. Using a wealth of new
research, Brian Hannan traces the genesis of the movie from the day TE Lawrence
himself purportedly walked into a movie producer’s office in the 1920s through
to the glorious reissues, providing, along the way, a history of the movie world
of the time.